Wiring success

At last! The wiring harness from hell has been transformed into a fully functional wiring complete with an Acewell speedometer and all. After many hours and then some, I finally managed to connect everything in a way that seems to work. I won’t know until the bike is up and running so I can see the speedometer and tachometer in action. But hey, for now I have clock power, everything lights up when I turn the key, the signals for oil pressure, neutral, turn signals and high beams work. It wasn’t easy though…

This morning when I got to the man cave to try out the switches, I got the same problem as yesterday. The right turn signal worked perfectly, the left not at all but instead I got the headlight and plate light flashing. Huh!

The fuses kept blowing too and I couldn’t figure out why until suddenly I realized that the wires I had constructed were hanging loose with the connectors sometimes touching each other and sometimes touching the frame which I had grounded to the negative of the battery. That was the cause of all the shorts and strange stuff happening randomly.

I taped all the connectors and hooked them up one at a time to verify function and then things started to fall in place. One by one, the different functions not only worked but their respective light on the gauge worked as well. The final piece of the puzzle was how to get power to the clock of the Acewell but by then, I spoke wiring diagrams fluently and just took a quick glance to see that I had to construct another eye lug wire and connect it to the positive of the battery.

My habit of making every cable a little bit too long to have some length to spare in case I do rebuilds in the future or want to try something else means that the wiring harness grows bigger every time I work on it instead of smaller. This is the second time I install an aftermarket gauge so it’s starting to swell. With a bit of force and thought, I once again managed to fit it somewhat properly in the space within the frame, on top of the spark plugs. Neat and clean.

Going with the flow, I also installed the carbs or tried at least. The choke cable and push/pull cables of the throttle are in place and the carbs as well, but I think I have do a minor adjustment to the boots. They are really hard to get in place. If the left side is perfect, the right side is a little bit off and vice versa. But I’ll figure that out.

What’s left now is putting back the engine covers, the seat, the tank and fill her with fluids. When that’s done, she’s ready to start. For some reason the front brakes are a lot sharper than before. I must admit I haven’t really done anything to them except paint them. Bleeding them are such a pain that I kept the system closed during the entire process of the rebuild. Somehow they are much crisper now. But hey, who am I to complain? I just hope this goes for the engine and carbs too…